ROONEY TO MISS UNITED’S EUROPA LEAGUE OPENER

Jose Mour­inho has cho­sen to leave Wayne Rooney out of Manch­ester United’s 20-man squad for their open­ing Europa League group game against Feyeno­ord. The Eng­land striker trained yes­ter­day but did not travel with the rest of the squad to Rot­ter­dam for tonight’s game (9pm UAE time). Also not in­cluded in the trav­el­ling party were An­to­nio Va­len­cia and Jesse Lin­gard, while Phil Jones, Luke Shaw and Hen­rikh Mkhi­taryan miss out through in­jury. Also in ac­tion on tonight (9pm UAE time) are lit­tle-known Ir­ish team Dun­dalk, who face Dutch op­po­si­tion in AZ Alk­maar. The club are only the sec­ond Ir­ish side, af­ter Sham­rock Rovers in 2011/12, to make it to the group stages of the Europa League and are viewed as mas­sive un­der­dogs. How­ever, for mid­fielder Rob­bie Ben­son (be­low, right) it is a chance for the part-timers to show what they can do on the Euro­pean stage. “It means ev­ery­thing,” said the 24-year-old. “Ev­ery player wants to play at the high­est level they can and to show­case our tal­ents on a stage as big as that.” Southamp­ton are the other Bri­tish team in ac­tion as they face Sparta Prague tonight at 11.05pm. The Saints have lost just one of 14 home Euro­pean ties down the years.